Critical
Responses | Informative
Summaries | Works Cited
"Cybercuba.com(munist): Electronic Literacy, Resistance,
and Postrevolutionary Cuba"
by Laura Sullivan and Victor Fernandez
As with many chapters in this text, Sullivan and Fernandez directly state their arrangement:
First, we discuss the inadequacy of the application of stereotypes regarding print literacy in Cuba, particularly in light of the class context involved. Second, we examine a particular instance of the unique nature of internally-directed Web production in Cuba, the InfoMed network. Third, we turn our attention to the way the Internet functions as a key medium of communications about Cuba to foreigners, beginning with an examination of the ideological conflicts manifested in website about Cuba, and then focusing specifically on the examples of two of the most important Cuban websites designed for primarily foreign audiences. [. . .] In the final sections of the chapter, we investigate website design techniques in more detail and explore power relations, including regional issues, gender differences, and economic positioning in the production and consumption of websites about and from Cuba. (217-218)
Sullivan and Fernandez examine "websites about Cuba, produced from within and without the country," to detail the online literacy practices used by Cubans and by those reading and writing about Cuba (246). They argue, though, that Cuban online literacy is "as much about the electronic literacy practices of Web viewers outside of Cuba, as about those of Cubans living in Cuba" (246). Because Sullivan and Fernandez see Cuban electronic literacy practices as shaped by “larger global battles between proponents of capitalism and those who seek a different way of organizing society” (243), the authors do not provide extensive or detailed discussions of individual Cubans’ particular literacy practices when reading and writing the Web. Instead, their chapter
examines the social, economic, and material conditions related to Cuba and electronic literacy, considering, for example: the history of state support of education and literacy, especially demonstrated in the postrevolutionary literacy campaign; socialism – its structure and goals; technological difficulties with the country’s telecommunications infrastructure; the serious effects of the US embargo, particularly those manifested in the 1994 Helms-Burton Act; and the recent introduction of US dollars into the Cuban economy. (217)To support their arguments, the authors use websites, the history of Cuba-related domain names, and the history of literacy and politics in and around Cuba to delineate the conditions of Cubans and Cuban Web based projects. Nevertheless, their focus is predominately on the geopolitical realities that shape modern Cuban culture, and they use their research into Cuban Web pages and Web pages about Cuba as a way to trace these geopolitical realities, in particular, the American embargo of Cuba.